Focused on social, health and environmental programmes, the company invests in initiatives of holistic welfare of co-communities
India CSR News Network
NEW DELHI: United Breweries Limited, a company that firmly believes in sustainable development, is focused on growing their business in a socially and environmentally responsible way, while meeting the legitimate interests of their stakeholders.
Building and Transforming communities require focus, time, commitment and resources. As guided by their social principles the thematic areas for UBL’s corporate social initiatives have been carefully chosen to maximize output of the corporate social responsibility initiatives. The programmes have been solidified with the participation of business units, employees and the community that they work with and focus areas have emerged as:
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Education
Primary Health
Environmental sustainability
UBL implements its CSR programmes either directly, or through partnerships with reputed non-profits having expertise in selected thematic areas. Emanating from the belief that their co-communities deserve attention on priority, the CSR implementation area has been defined as 10 kms radius of UBL operations and manufacturing facilities.
In the last year, the company continued to make great advances— from evolving their approach to larger CSR programs, to taking community along in their water stewardship efforts and striving towards usage of renewable energy and replacement of fossil fuels with agricultural waste. To celebrate that progress and share their collective aspirations for a sustainable future in the year -2015-16, they have published their corporate Responsibility Report.
Safe Drinking Water Programme—In 2015, they launched an ambitious safe drinking water programme with a commitment of providing safe drinking water to 600,000 people by 2020. In collaboration with non-profit partners, they have touched the lives of over 54000 people in the states of Karnataka, Telangana and Maharashtra.
Primary Education— through their education initiative, UBL has supported over 10,000 children in 13 states. They have specifically focussed on a region with poor human development indicators for a larger primary education intervention directed at improvement of quality of education in government schools in a public private partnership mode.
Primary Health—In the last year, they have provided health care service and free medicines to over 35000 people in ten states through health centres and mobile medical units run by our manufacturing units.
Reduction of fresh water consumption—over the last decade, the fresh water (Litre / Litre of beer) consumption has been reduced by more than 50% across all their breweries. As part of the journey towards becoming a water positive organisation, waste water is recycled through sophisticated tertiary treatment systems and used in auxiliary functions in the plant. As of March 31, 2016, the average fresh water consumption is about 3.52 litres /litre of beer.
Water Conservation—11 out of the 22 company owned breweries have got rainwater harvesting systems installed within the brewery premises, thereby effectively improving the water table. Rainwater harvesting projects have also been installed outside the brewery premises in four states to help the local community derive benefit from this hitherto run-off water, by either collecting the same in ponds or diverting it to rainwater harvesting structures that feed into the ground water table. As of March 31, 2016, total harvested recharge water quantity is 17% of the total fresh water consumption. The mission is to move towards becoming a water positive organisation by the year 2025.
Use of agricultural waste instead of fossil fuels—At the end of the last year, 85% of the total fuel used was from agricultural waste.
Use of renewable energy sources– To leverage the potential of solar energy available in our country, UBL has tied up with solar power producers and three of our breweries would largely be operated on solar power from August 2016 onwards.
UBL’s commitment to social responsibilities Shekhar Ramamurthy, Managing Director, UBL said “We undertake CSR programmes keeping in perspective community interests, both in the short and long-term. We actively work towards ensuring availability and accessibility of resources to our co-communities and regularly monitor outcomes of our initiatives and publicly report our progress in a transparent manner”.
Adding further regarding the locations and causes as part of the projects he said “We operate from several locations across the country, each non-uniform in levels of awareness, socio- economic development, education and practices. We focus our efforts on communities residing in the vicinity of our breweries for our CSR initiatives. We have strongly integrated CSR in our corporate strategy and intend to drive it towards bringing about sustainable social development in those regions”.
United Breweries is India’s largest producer of beer and has over 50% share of the Indian brewing market with 21 own and 8 contract breweries across the length and breadth of India. Our flagship brand ‘Kingfisher’, has achieved international recognition consistently winning several awards at international beer festivals. Our most popular beer, Kingfisher Premium Lager beer is currently available in 69 countries and leads the way among Indian beers in the international market. Each outlet selling beer in India sells at least one brand from United Breweries and 1 out of every 2 bottles of beer sold in India is a UB beer.
